Italy

Messina Strait Sometimes days don’t go quite as expected…… All started well on out trip up the Messina Strait. Somebody accidentally set their alarm clock an hour earlier than planned, but that was no bad thing as it turned out as the extra hour meant we got a slow sail […]

North Through The Messina Straits

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Leaving Roccella We made it out of the marina! Despite having watched many boats leaving over the last few weeks, I hadn’t felt any great urge to get gone this year, until just in the last few days, my leaving lust finally kicked in. Just in time for a storm […]

The First Trip of Summer 2018

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Winter 2017-18 In the depths of January the winter seemed to be crawling by, but in the blink of an eye, here we are in the last flurries of preparation to depart for our summer adventures. As usual, there have been plenty of jobs to do on Emerald. There was the […]

Winter 2017/18

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We’re now in our winter home and settling in to winter chores and exploring the area. Our time in the Ionian took us from Messolonghi for an overnight stop on Ithaka then on to Vlicho. We decided to make a single passage across to our winter home in Italy rather […]

To our Winter Home Across the Ionian Sea

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Otranto An overnight passage messes with our body clocks, especially when it’s just one night and we can’t get into a watch system rhythm, so we usually need a day of rest to recover. The harbour of Otranto was perfect for an afternoon nap – the sea was calm and a beautiful […]

Otranto and Brindisi

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27th May to 1st June We are beginning to strongly dislike the Ionian Sea. Of the three crossings we have made, none can be described as having been enjoyable. The first was a dull slog where we only sailed a quarter of it, the second was beset with no wind […]

Ionian Sea Passage Making

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Whew! Doesn’t time fly when you’re working hard? April has zoomed by with lots of activity in the marina as boats prepare to leave for their summer cruising. We had a long list of get-gone jobs – transforming Emerald from her static winter state so that we can head off for our […]

A Frenzy of Get Gone Jobs

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Our sailing-away life has been a bit marina centred of late and I was starting to get itchy feet for at least a few hours away from the boat. Hiring a car here for a last minute day out is just too expensive or too much hassle, so being limited […]

Rambling Round Ragusa

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Ah I’ve let the blog slip a little, the last one being back in December. We’ve had some great winter weather since then, only just breaking down in the last few weeks into more unsettled conditions. Christmas & New Year In the run up to Christmas a weekly Sunday advent […]

What have we been up to this winter?

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As part of our efforts to see more of Sicily this winter we headed off along with the Wandering Dragons (Stephen and Anne) for a three day road trip. We were extremely lucky with the weather – blue skies, light winds and warm temperatures contrasted sharply with the Medicane (a […]

Bikini Clad Romans and Rumbling Volcanos

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We’ve been back in MdR a month or so now and have been getting on with putting Emerald to bed, cleaning and removing sails, washing the dinghy and kayaks for storage and servicing and winterising the generator, outboard and main engine. I Can See a Rainbow / Working on the […]

Back in Marina di Ragusa

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The Weather Window Quandary The Ionian Sea between Sicily and Greece is a notoriously difficult stretch of water to get a perfect weather window for crossing in one go. This is especially so as autumn arrives bringing regular storms. In the last two weeks we have sat out three storms […]

Highs and Lows of our Sail From Greece to Sicily

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